clock
Junior Member
- Mar 19, 2012
- 118
- 2,103
This could end up being the worst guide not only in the history of bhw but of mankind. The biggest mistake I've made since swiping right only for her husband, a wild rhinoceros, to come home from a hard day at the swamp and find me wearing his pyjamas, smoking his cigars and in bed with his wife.
Do you like long stories? strap yourself down, grab some grub and try not to fall asleep. Firstly I really am a piss poor judge of whether or not something will be of benefit to people and have been wondering whether this is worth posting or is it just a load of outdated old bollocks. Some of it might not even be possible anymore, I'm really not sure but in the end I figured it doesn't really matter if it is a lot of shit, at least I tried.
This is all pretty basic stuff and I'm hoping it may help some beginners in the seo world that are playing around with Google my business. I have searched to see if this kind of thing has been posted before but couldn't find anything but I am oldish and the old brain cells are dying out.
Because it has been around 2 years since I tried this, there may end up being some limitations, so before we start.
1. Part of this may only work for certain gmb categories, although a few years back you could work around this and set it up for everything. I'm not sure if that work around still exists but it is worth exploring and I will explain it.
2. It has been around 2 years since I set something like this up. There could now and may well have always been some better way, but I'm going to run through how I used to do this. I can see that my old sites are still in place so I am presuming this can still be done. However, it may not work anymore so bear that in mind.
3. We know stats don't mean much but if you are the type that jizzes in their pants at the sight of high numbers quicker than when your first girlfriend pulled your plonker, this alone should give you a ahrefs dr in the 50s.
4. I've only tried this 8 times with a local gmb. These were not clients, I'd rather sandpaper my balls than have to deal with them. 4 of them were for me and family and 4 for friends I have helped out.
5. I am typing this from memory and in the couple of years since I last set this up I have taken copious amounts of opioid drugs and chemo drugs and chemo brain is a bastard sometimes so my brain is pretty frazzled at times.
I'm not going to run through how to fully set up your Google my business, there is plenty of information on that around.
When setting up your gmb you choose a business category and some of them have an option to add an appointment url.
If this does not appear you can try other categories which are still relevant until it does. The work around I mentioned is that you could pick a category that has nothing to do with your business and set up what you need to in the steps below before google has a chance to change it. Once they changed it back to what is more likely to be your business category the appointment url would disappear as an option in the info section but what we want would remain. I do not know if this still works!
The other option is to think outside the box and find a category related to your business that has this option and wait for approval. Don't give up on the first attempt, I tried this out and noticed after a few declines someone decided to approve it. If you just cannot get the appointment url set up then you will miss a major benefit. However, there will still be some map pack ranking help.
Once you have the option to add an appointment url, add the website url you want to link to.
In the gmb go down to the website option and use google's website builder. Follow the instructions and it will create a one page site for you using the information you filled out in your gmb. You name this site. I would use branded for my main site and an emd/pmd for this one.
Once created, you will end up with a url something like this.
https://ceo-sams-lamp.business.site - this is the site canonical and will index
These business sites also have another url type -
https://business.google.com/website/ceo-sams-lamp/ - this version is set to no index and the canonical points to the url above (https://ceo-sams-lamp.business.site).
What you can also do is buy a domain for this site, although this was for limited countries. You can give google £10 or whatever it is now and pick your domain name. If you take this option this business site will have the two urls above and a normal domain name that you have chosen. I kept mine the same as what I named the business site, for example.
https://ceosamslamp.com
All of the above urls are obviously the same page. On this page, if you managed to add an appointment url, there will be a Make Appointment button on the top right. You will see that this takes you to the main website you added in the appointment url option in your gmb. This is still showing as a do follow link for my older set ups and hopefully that remains the case.
Next, you are going to make some posts on your gmb. Add a good amount of text, a photo and here you can add your call to action with a link.
Things are always changing but in my past experience the links from these call to action buttons to my site appeared as a 302. This could have been me fucking it up but I have not seen any push in rankings from this button. I'm no expert and I may have not been doing it right.
Because a google property to a google property was always do follow I always used these to link to things like maps, ludocid, earth entity, knowledge graph etc in various forms. This type of linking helped boost the map pack.
If that cta button did perform differently or does now and it does the job we want it to do which is to help our site as well as the map pack. This would mean the appointment url part becomes irrelevant and makes the set up much easier. I'm going to continue to run with it not doing anything for a main site.
The posts you make on your gmb show up on your new business.site. Once you have created a post and you click on that post it will open into a page and the url will be something like this -
https://ceo-sams-lamp.business.site/posts/123456789000124 - indexable and canonical
Again, you have the other url type.
https://business.google.com/website/ceo-sams-lamp/posts/123456789000124 - NO INDEX BUT these posts DO INDEX or should I say DID INDEX and this time it has its own canonical which makes each variation unique.
So, where as the main page urls - https://ceo-sams-lamp.business.site and https://business.google.com/website/ceo-sams-lamp both canonical to one page, these type of posts have their own canonical and i'll say again, this makes each unique.
Again each of these are indexable, appear in ahrefs, a high dr and have the same Make Appointment link to your main site in appointment url option you filled out as well as the cta button.
Of course, if you purchased a domain also, you will have this kind of thing.
https://ceosamslamp.com/posts/123456789000124
The front page of these google business sites did take 9 posts then they drop off to another page. So add 9 posts in the same way or more as long as you don't forget them if you intend link building to the main business.site page.
Now you will have
9 different posts with this type of url
https://ceo-sams-lamp.business.site/posts/123456789000124
9 with this type
https://business.google.com/website/ceo-sams-lamp/posts/123456789000124
and 9 with this type
https://ceosamslamp.com/posts/123456789000124
Each of these will have that Make Appointment link pointing to your main site as well as your cta button. Each will appear in ahrefs and a website with no other links but these will give you a dr in the 50s if that floats your boat. But don't go jerking off over these figures, they are just numbers after all.
Having many urls like this is advantageous because you now have many different ones to send links to and these are high dr properties. If you purchased the domain as well, treat this more like a new website. The advantage of buying this as an emd/pmd is now you have a kw relevant domain also pointing to your main site.
Another interesting thing you can add on the end of these urls are #keywords. You can remove the ?hl=en language thing at the end of the url and add some keywords which can help add relevancy to the url and build links to these.
Examples
https://business.google.com/website/ceo-sams-lamp/#jenniferhttps://ceo-sams-lamp.business.site/posts/123456789000124#snapplehttps://business.google.com/website/ceo-sams-lamp/posts/123456789000124#cheap ass motel
https://ceo-sams-lamp.business.site/posts/9876543210#awesomenesshttps://business.google.com/website/ceo-sams-lamp/posts/9876543210#houses
You can also run these through an url shortener and then build links to the shortener.
So, to recap you have a number of these post pages with a link with the anchor Make Appointment to your site. You can send some links to these posts. We are going whatever the fuck tier each is and using google to google properties to power this stuff up.
links > gmb posts > call to action button > your google properties
> Make Appointment button > your main site
Below are some examples of what I was talking about when linking out from the post call to action buttons. Go for varations of your maps and throw in a few others.
Some of these are easy to find, some need a little more exploration. Linking out to things like the ludocid may seem like it serves no purpose but I'm using it to build trust to the business and telling google this is me like you might with other properties. Do some research and find the versions for your business.
I'm not going to tell you how to find them Muhahaha. There is a reason. It's when you dig into things like this and research that you find other cool things. I haven't plowed through this stuff in ages and there maybe other ones you come across that can help. Doing it yourself will help you in the long run and like I said, some of these are really simple to locate anyway.
https://maps.google.com/maps?cid=
this 302s to -
https://www.google.com/maps/place/
https://goo.gl/maps/
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer
https://www.google.com/search?ludocid=
https://www.google.com/earth/rpc/entity?
Below is an example of this one and these used to index. I could have sworn this used to be a direct link to your site, it's now a 302 redirect but you can still grab one for your business and have another google url to place into other google properties.
https://www.google.com/earth/rpc/en...225&fid=0x48760538ed2a30ff:0x15ee630d4b4e0d42
https://earth.app.goo.gl/this will run through a couple of 302s and end up with a url like this
https://earth.google.com/static/
These are some knowledge graph examples which you can create for your business. Pop these in your browser and see who appears. I have had to add space in the urls to show whats happening
https ://www. google.com/search?q=knowledge+graph+search+api&kponly&kgmid=/m/0lwkh
https ://www. google.com/search?q=knowledge+graph+search+api&kponly&kgmid=/g/11fkd9nfcb
https ://www. google.com/search?q=knowledge+graph+search+api&kponly&kgmid=/m/03nzf1
you can shorten these to this type of thing -
https: //g.co/kg/m/03nzf1
This is a good basic introduction to using your gmb and good way to start if on a tight budget and you can't afford to just blast your way through with high quality links. It's also pretty white hat, you're not going to get a penalty using googles own stuff. You can go deeper and more advanced into this, do different things with all of these urls, for example adding them to other google properties and it is worth digging into and playing around with. It is a nice piece of the puzzle which did improve rankings. As keywords get more difficult you can add more pieces to the puzzle until you eventually hit a level where you will need different types of high quality backlinks.
Additional story. One of my last uses of this was for ranking in the seo/ digital marketing niche in my area, around 2 years ago. I fancied a friendly challenge to see if I could outrank the agencies in my area, we're not talking major cities. Set up site and gmb - Waited about 8 or 9 months for it to settle - Hovering around page 3 so not content only piss easy but also in no way difficult - Did above gmb stuff - Map position moved quickly into 3 pack then progressed to no.1 - Site took about 4 months to slowly move up and finished at no.2 - It is still no.1 in map pack but I just noticed a map pack advert above me, never seen that before - I didn't renew ssl of the main site and it dropped faster than if a sarkarseo package had been sent to it and is now on page 3.
If you got this far down congratulations. I hope this all still works and at least one person gets some benefit from it. I believe it still does work judging from my old site which is why I did choose to post in the end. But again do remember, it could be out of date haha That's All Folks
Do you like long stories? strap yourself down, grab some grub and try not to fall asleep. Firstly I really am a piss poor judge of whether or not something will be of benefit to people and have been wondering whether this is worth posting or is it just a load of outdated old bollocks. Some of it might not even be possible anymore, I'm really not sure but in the end I figured it doesn't really matter if it is a lot of shit, at least I tried.
This is all pretty basic stuff and I'm hoping it may help some beginners in the seo world that are playing around with Google my business. I have searched to see if this kind of thing has been posted before but couldn't find anything but I am oldish and the old brain cells are dying out.
Because it has been around 2 years since I tried this, there may end up being some limitations, so before we start.
1. Part of this may only work for certain gmb categories, although a few years back you could work around this and set it up for everything. I'm not sure if that work around still exists but it is worth exploring and I will explain it.
2. It has been around 2 years since I set something like this up. There could now and may well have always been some better way, but I'm going to run through how I used to do this. I can see that my old sites are still in place so I am presuming this can still be done. However, it may not work anymore so bear that in mind.
3. We know stats don't mean much but if you are the type that jizzes in their pants at the sight of high numbers quicker than when your first girlfriend pulled your plonker, this alone should give you a ahrefs dr in the 50s.
4. I've only tried this 8 times with a local gmb. These were not clients, I'd rather sandpaper my balls than have to deal with them. 4 of them were for me and family and 4 for friends I have helped out.
5. I am typing this from memory and in the couple of years since I last set this up I have taken copious amounts of opioid drugs and chemo drugs and chemo brain is a bastard sometimes so my brain is pretty frazzled at times.
I'm not going to run through how to fully set up your Google my business, there is plenty of information on that around.
When setting up your gmb you choose a business category and some of them have an option to add an appointment url.
If this does not appear you can try other categories which are still relevant until it does. The work around I mentioned is that you could pick a category that has nothing to do with your business and set up what you need to in the steps below before google has a chance to change it. Once they changed it back to what is more likely to be your business category the appointment url would disappear as an option in the info section but what we want would remain. I do not know if this still works!
The other option is to think outside the box and find a category related to your business that has this option and wait for approval. Don't give up on the first attempt, I tried this out and noticed after a few declines someone decided to approve it. If you just cannot get the appointment url set up then you will miss a major benefit. However, there will still be some map pack ranking help.
Once you have the option to add an appointment url, add the website url you want to link to.
In the gmb go down to the website option and use google's website builder. Follow the instructions and it will create a one page site for you using the information you filled out in your gmb. You name this site. I would use branded for my main site and an emd/pmd for this one.
Once created, you will end up with a url something like this.
https://ceo-sams-lamp.business.site - this is the site canonical and will index
These business sites also have another url type -
https://business.google.com/website/ceo-sams-lamp/ - this version is set to no index and the canonical points to the url above (https://ceo-sams-lamp.business.site).
What you can also do is buy a domain for this site, although this was for limited countries. You can give google £10 or whatever it is now and pick your domain name. If you take this option this business site will have the two urls above and a normal domain name that you have chosen. I kept mine the same as what I named the business site, for example.
https://ceosamslamp.com
All of the above urls are obviously the same page. On this page, if you managed to add an appointment url, there will be a Make Appointment button on the top right. You will see that this takes you to the main website you added in the appointment url option in your gmb. This is still showing as a do follow link for my older set ups and hopefully that remains the case.
Next, you are going to make some posts on your gmb. Add a good amount of text, a photo and here you can add your call to action with a link.
Things are always changing but in my past experience the links from these call to action buttons to my site appeared as a 302. This could have been me fucking it up but I have not seen any push in rankings from this button. I'm no expert and I may have not been doing it right.
Because a google property to a google property was always do follow I always used these to link to things like maps, ludocid, earth entity, knowledge graph etc in various forms. This type of linking helped boost the map pack.
If that cta button did perform differently or does now and it does the job we want it to do which is to help our site as well as the map pack. This would mean the appointment url part becomes irrelevant and makes the set up much easier. I'm going to continue to run with it not doing anything for a main site.
The posts you make on your gmb show up on your new business.site. Once you have created a post and you click on that post it will open into a page and the url will be something like this -
https://ceo-sams-lamp.business.site/posts/123456789000124 - indexable and canonical
Again, you have the other url type.
https://business.google.com/website/ceo-sams-lamp/posts/123456789000124 - NO INDEX BUT these posts DO INDEX or should I say DID INDEX and this time it has its own canonical which makes each variation unique.
So, where as the main page urls - https://ceo-sams-lamp.business.site and https://business.google.com/website/ceo-sams-lamp both canonical to one page, these type of posts have their own canonical and i'll say again, this makes each unique.
Again each of these are indexable, appear in ahrefs, a high dr and have the same Make Appointment link to your main site in appointment url option you filled out as well as the cta button.
Of course, if you purchased a domain also, you will have this kind of thing.
https://ceosamslamp.com/posts/123456789000124
The front page of these google business sites did take 9 posts then they drop off to another page. So add 9 posts in the same way or more as long as you don't forget them if you intend link building to the main business.site page.
Now you will have
9 different posts with this type of url
https://ceo-sams-lamp.business.site/posts/123456789000124
9 with this type
https://business.google.com/website/ceo-sams-lamp/posts/123456789000124
and 9 with this type
https://ceosamslamp.com/posts/123456789000124
Each of these will have that Make Appointment link pointing to your main site as well as your cta button. Each will appear in ahrefs and a website with no other links but these will give you a dr in the 50s if that floats your boat. But don't go jerking off over these figures, they are just numbers after all.
Having many urls like this is advantageous because you now have many different ones to send links to and these are high dr properties. If you purchased the domain as well, treat this more like a new website. The advantage of buying this as an emd/pmd is now you have a kw relevant domain also pointing to your main site.
Another interesting thing you can add on the end of these urls are #keywords. You can remove the ?hl=en language thing at the end of the url and add some keywords which can help add relevancy to the url and build links to these.
Examples
https://business.google.com/website/ceo-sams-lamp/#jenniferhttps://ceo-sams-lamp.business.site/posts/123456789000124#snapplehttps://business.google.com/website/ceo-sams-lamp/posts/123456789000124#cheap ass motel
https://ceo-sams-lamp.business.site/posts/9876543210#awesomenesshttps://business.google.com/website/ceo-sams-lamp/posts/9876543210#houses
You can also run these through an url shortener and then build links to the shortener.
So, to recap you have a number of these post pages with a link with the anchor Make Appointment to your site. You can send some links to these posts. We are going whatever the fuck tier each is and using google to google properties to power this stuff up.
links > gmb posts > call to action button > your google properties
> Make Appointment button > your main site
Below are some examples of what I was talking about when linking out from the post call to action buttons. Go for varations of your maps and throw in a few others.
Some of these are easy to find, some need a little more exploration. Linking out to things like the ludocid may seem like it serves no purpose but I'm using it to build trust to the business and telling google this is me like you might with other properties. Do some research and find the versions for your business.
I'm not going to tell you how to find them Muhahaha. There is a reason. It's when you dig into things like this and research that you find other cool things. I haven't plowed through this stuff in ages and there maybe other ones you come across that can help. Doing it yourself will help you in the long run and like I said, some of these are really simple to locate anyway.
https://maps.google.com/maps?cid=
this 302s to -
https://www.google.com/maps/place/
https://goo.gl/maps/
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer
https://www.google.com/search?ludocid=
https://www.google.com/earth/rpc/entity?
Below is an example of this one and these used to index. I could have sworn this used to be a direct link to your site, it's now a 302 redirect but you can still grab one for your business and have another google url to place into other google properties.
https://www.google.com/earth/rpc/en...225&fid=0x48760538ed2a30ff:0x15ee630d4b4e0d42
https://earth.app.goo.gl/this will run through a couple of 302s and end up with a url like this
https://earth.google.com/static/
These are some knowledge graph examples which you can create for your business. Pop these in your browser and see who appears. I have had to add space in the urls to show whats happening
https ://www. google.com/search?q=knowledge+graph+search+api&kponly&kgmid=/m/0lwkh
https ://www. google.com/search?q=knowledge+graph+search+api&kponly&kgmid=/g/11fkd9nfcb
https ://www. google.com/search?q=knowledge+graph+search+api&kponly&kgmid=/m/03nzf1
you can shorten these to this type of thing -
https: //g.co/kg/m/03nzf1
This is a good basic introduction to using your gmb and good way to start if on a tight budget and you can't afford to just blast your way through with high quality links. It's also pretty white hat, you're not going to get a penalty using googles own stuff. You can go deeper and more advanced into this, do different things with all of these urls, for example adding them to other google properties and it is worth digging into and playing around with. It is a nice piece of the puzzle which did improve rankings. As keywords get more difficult you can add more pieces to the puzzle until you eventually hit a level where you will need different types of high quality backlinks.
Additional story. One of my last uses of this was for ranking in the seo/ digital marketing niche in my area, around 2 years ago. I fancied a friendly challenge to see if I could outrank the agencies in my area, we're not talking major cities. Set up site and gmb - Waited about 8 or 9 months for it to settle - Hovering around page 3 so not content only piss easy but also in no way difficult - Did above gmb stuff - Map position moved quickly into 3 pack then progressed to no.1 - Site took about 4 months to slowly move up and finished at no.2 - It is still no.1 in map pack but I just noticed a map pack advert above me, never seen that before - I didn't renew ssl of the main site and it dropped faster than if a sarkarseo package had been sent to it and is now on page 3.
If you got this far down congratulations. I hope this all still works and at least one person gets some benefit from it. I believe it still does work judging from my old site which is why I did choose to post in the end. But again do remember, it could be out of date haha That's All Folks
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